Players keeping stats secret

[tburdett]

Put me in the middle ground.

On the one hand, I HATE it when players metagame the fact that they know the Wisdom and Intelligence of all of their friends.

(edited to remove stuff that I don't plan to reply to)

Thoughts?

-Tacky

IRL, do YOU know the relative intelligence levels of your friends and family members? I know that I do.

IRL, do YOU know, among your friends, who makes good (high wisdom) decisions and who makes foolish (low wisdom) decisions? I know that I do.

I don't think that it is, in any way, metagaming for characters to be able to pick up this information, even if they've only known each other for a short period of time.

 

[Allanon]

One of the more fun campaigns I played in was when the DM (due to a important PC antagonist of his ongoing campaign being sick) decided to start a new in between game.
We were given a blank sheet of paper and nothing else and then we were told (he was a hell of a narrator) that we woke up, not knowing anything... Our memory's were total blanks, no name no skills not even ability scores were given. Discriptions of how everyone looked were given and that was it. He had al the character sheets so when we tried anything we'd throw dice and he'd look it up. But not knowing anything about yourself is a hell of a lot of fun.
Just imagine in his nornal campaign I was a sneaky gnome rogue. Now I (something I found out later) was a Half-elf Sorcerer (with a undead rat in his backpack..which turned out to be my familiar...... just imagine the conversations you can have with an undead rat )...
Spellcasting was akward as I only remembered spells when I needed them most... Like casting dimension door when I was falling to my doom... or almost frying the party with a fireball when taunted by a bothersome fey
Ahhh... the good old days

 

[takyris]

IRL, do YOU know the relative intelligence levels of your friends and family members? I know that I do.

IRL, do YOU know, among your friends, who makes good (high wisdom) decisions and who makes foolish (low wisdom) decisions? I know that I do.

I don't think that it is, in any way, metagaming for characters to be able to pick up this information, even if they've only known each other for a short period of time.

T-Bird, maybe quoting the parts where I make those exact points would have been nice.

I do know the relative intelligence and wisdom levels of my friends and family. I know this because I get to see them make decisions.

I would rather that PCs learn each other's relevant stats from watching them make decisions -- smart ones or stupid ones -- and figuring it out there.

Did you read my followup post, where I talked about the player whose CHARACTER declared that Wisdom "wasn't really his thing"? That's what I'm against.

So really, I don't think we disagree, unless you're in favor of players just telling each other their stats. I'm in favor of players eventually knowing each character's stats from the in-game descriptions that the players use.

-Tacky

 

[Joshua Randall]

I am amazed at the number of vehement responses on this topic. Being a true solipsist , I always assumed that everyone played the way I used to: with character sheets out in the open and full sharing of numeric game information. Now I understand that such is not the case.

I still think that players keeping their stats and abilities secret is annoying, though, especially to fellow players. (Of course, it has little effect on the omniscient DM.)

Also, that same DM won't hesitate to hit his group with optimized NPC parties who closely coordinate their abilities. Let's see the PCs manage that without sharing information....

 

[Moe Ronalds]

My current character in a friend's campaign is a rogue who grew up in a small, backwater town with absolutely ZERO access to magic. Thus, the conclusion he came up with from assorted tales is that all mages are really just big cons who use their great scientific skill to powerful effect, and call it magic. I pumped up his alchemy and handle animal (for a familiar) skills, and planted the rumor that I'm actually playing an epic-level mage in a party of first level characters, and no one knows that my burning hands spell is actually alchemist's fire.

 

[drakhe]

...
PS: If you don't know your stats, how do you know whether you can take feats such as power attack or expertise?

The DM could award such feats depending on how the player plays his character (the actions dictate the evolution of a character, not the players desire)

My WFRP GM uses this aproach. As an example: My templar of the Fiery Heart (the WFRP paladin) had a very low balistic skill (obviously the stat used to fire ranged weapons, in WFRP all rolls are D% and the stats are more akin to unit stats in a tabletop miniature game. The warhammer roleplay is based on the world of the Warhammer Battle game). At some point in the campaign the group passes through one of the major cities of the Empire (must have been Altdorf or Maegdenburg, don't remember) where there was a fair. One day there was a bow shooting contest and since I needed to be there (some of the people we needed to keep an eye on were competing also) I joined. After some good (read lucky) roll's I ended up in the top 5. After that session, my DM awarded me an increase in balistic skill.